The detective who painstakingly solved a 32-year-old murder case and jailed a Bristol man through groundbreaking DNA evidence has told her story - and said what the killer told his wife chilled her the most.
Julie Mackay was a Detective Sergeant with Avon and Somerset police when she transferred to the force’s cold case unit - and became fascinated with the shocking case of the murder of a teenager in Bath back in 1984.
She pledged to the mother of Melanie Road, who was just 17 when she was raped and murdered on her way home from a night out, that she would not rest until she found her daughter’s killer - and they still have a bond and friendship that will last a lifetime.
Read more: How Christopher Hampton lived with a very dark secret for nearly 32 years
Now, Julie Mackay, who was promoted to Det Supt before she retired in April 2020 and won awards for tracking down Melanie’s killer, has written a book about the case with local ITV West journalist Robert Murphy, which gives a fascinating insight into how the case was solved, and the impact it had on both the key women in the story - the police officer who became obsessed with finding the killer, and the grieving mother who was still waiting for justice.
The book, To Hunt A Killer, tells the story of how, back in 1984, Jean Road realised her daughter Melanie, 17, hadn’t returned from a night out in Bath with friends, and then rushed outside to hear a police officer calling the name ‘Melanie’ from a loudspeaker mounted on a patrol car. Melanie’s body had been found, and the police were looking for her home, and Jean’s life collapsed at the moment she stopped the car and told the officer inside her Melanie was missing.
The case was never solved, despite a massive police investigation at the time. Twenty-five years later, in 2009, an anniversary feature on Crimewatch stirred the detective instincts of Det Sgt Julie Mackay. “She’s a 41-year-old single mother of three who has been unable to gain a promotion for years,” said Rob Murphy. “There’s a Crimewatch TV feature to mark the 25th anniversary of this murder: The Killing of Melanie Road. In the police warehouse, Julie unearthed a file from the original enquiry and becomes hooked by the details: The trail of blood, Bath on a summer’s night, the investigative wrong turns…she takes on the case, works tirelessly to rebuild it, working closely with Melanie’s grieving family, and in 2015…she solves it,” he added.
It took six years but involved a massive amount of work to turn the now-primitive forensic evidence gathered in 1984 into more modern DNA evidence. Thousands of people were swabbed - including Ian Botham - but the book describes how it was something of a stroke of luck that eventually caught the killer.
In May 2015, a woman called Clare Hampton, who lived in Bath, had a row with her boyfriend and was arrested after she broke his necklace. She was eventually let off with a caution, but at the police station, they took her fingerprints and, crucially, a DNA swab. It was run through the database, as per the routine, and pinged for something unusual - a murder in 1984 - the killing of Melanie Road.
Detectives realised, obviously, that Clare wasn’t the killer, but her dad Christopher was living in Bath at the time. They asked him for a DNA swab - just as they had done for hundreds of others, and duly sent it off. It was weeks later that the forensic results came back - Hampton, a 63-year-old painter and decorator who now lived in Fishponds, in Bristol, was the man whose blood was found at the scene of the murder.
“It had taken 31 years for us to find out who had taken the life of this vibrant, talented teenager,” said Julia Mackay.
“Hampton lived with his second wife Julie and their daughter and his stepson. He had no criminal record and had lived an apparently law-abiding life since he raped and murdered Melanie. On July 2, 2015, police arrested him. When officers led him out of the house and his wife said: “I’ll see you later”, Hampton turned to her and said: ‘No you won’t’.
“His eyes were impassive, lacking spark, giving no clue as to what was happening behind them. He smelled of sweat. His breathing was still, his face pale,” she added.
Hampton had denied the murder for the next few months but on the day the trial was due to start in May 2016, he changed his plea and said the word ‘guilty’. He was jailed for life, with a minimum tariff of 22 years.
The book about the case does not just chart the story of the case itself, but also explores the deep bond that developed between the police officer Julie Mackay and Melanie’s mum Jean.
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